Explain the factors which attracted European imperialism to Africa in the late nineteenth century.

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Explain the factors which attracted European imperialism to Africa OR to Asia in the late nineteenth century.

From roughly 1870 to the advent of the First World War, European countries expanded their existing colonial powers in Africa. This was the New Imperialism, or Scramble for Africa, which is used to describe the frenzied division of African territory among European countries that resulted in nearly all of Africa becoming part of those countries’ colonial empires. It followed on the idea of imperialism that one nation should take over other areas as colonies. There were many attractive factors to pursue imperialism, and there is much debate over which elements were most important to the European powers.

I believe the most important factor in imperialism was the search for new markets and raw materials. The New Imperialism was a direct consequence of the Industrial Revolution that started in Britain in the 1780’s and spread across Europe and the Americas. The industrialization of the major European countries greatly increased levels of interest in the commercial potential of colonies in Africa. The result of mass industrialization was an over-production of cloth, iron, steel and other commodities. There was such a surplus of goods that the country’s own inhabitants could not possibly consume, and therefore these had to be sold abroad in colonies, whose markets the European powers would find easy to exploit and monopolise. There was also the demand for raw materials such as coal, rubber, cotton and diamonds, most of which could be sourced from Africa. Amongst many other similar discoveries, the finding of diamonds and gold in South Africa prompted a surge of Western miners and industrialists who flocked into southern Africa to profit.

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Alternatively, some stress the political determinants of imperialism, contending that states are motivated to expand primarily by the desire for power, security, and diplomatic advantages. The New Imperialism was a desire to maintain or recover national prestige. In this view, French imperialism was intended to restore France’s national prestige after the loss of Alsace-Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian war in 1870-1871, and to replace the provinces with overseas gain. Upon Germany’s entry into the colonial arena in 1884, Chancellor Caprivi commented that many Germans believed that ‘once we came into possession of colonies… we would become a great people’. Therefore it ...

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